


no love in This

by lemoninagin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Bottom Keith (Voltron), Bottom Lance (Voltron), Breathplay, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Klangst Week 2018, M/M, Mutual Pining, Rough Sex, Switching, Unresolved Romantic Tension, day 5: ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 04:34:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14128170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemoninagin/pseuds/lemoninagin
Summary: The first time Keith and Lance meet, they're seventeen and sixteen years old, respectively.If asked about it, Lance will claim it was the single worst thing to ever happen to him. Keith will claim that it was uneventful, that Lance wasn't the type to really catch his eye, but more his ear with how ineffably loud he was.No matter what they say, they're both lying. Because that day, as they lock eyes across the simulation bay, there's something there. Something intense and unspoken, as Lance shoots a cocky smirk in his general direction and Keith licks his too-dry lips.





	no love in This

“There’s no love in this!” Four-year-old Lance whines to his mother, “I want to watch something with love!”

It's early on a Monday morning, Lance knows because they checked the calendar when they woke up, and he proudly marked a big red ‘x’ over the day. They already went around the house, opening windows to let the warm breeze inside, so he can hear the sound of waves roaring in the distance. Lance thinks sometimes the ocean must get lonely when he's not around to play in it.

Now cosied up together in the living room, the TV is on, but it's playing old cartoons he's seen before. And although the friendly cat going on adventures is cute, Lance would rather see people in love.

Because love is nice—it makes him feel full inside to see, like that time he ate too much cake and got a tummy ache. Except in a better way, since he doesn't get sick from it.

“The only love you need to watch, mijo,” his mother tells him, because she always tells him this, “is the kind you give to other people.”

Lance doesn’t really know what that means, though, and the pictures of people smiling at each other and holding hands on TV still sound much better than whatever that is. So he bounces the cushion of the couch to get her attention, tugs at her skirt.

“What about a soaps, mama?”

His mother sets down the pants she’s been fixing, which he’s been watching in fascination as she sticks in a needle and puts two wide holes magically back together, and gathers him in her arms instead.

“Yes, a soaps,” she laughs, her cheeks going all chipmunk wide, like when she gets happy about something funny he says. And Lance likes that, because he likes making his mama happy.

“A soap has a lot of love, too. Exaggerated, but addictive.”

She bops him on the nose with her finger, and that’s how Lance knows she loves him, because she squeezes him tight and changes the channel.

The house is a scary kind of quiet with his older siblings off at school, but he likes this time alone with her since he can keep all the hugs and nose bops for himself. He doesn’t have to go to school yet, because school is for big kids, and he’s still too cool for that.

The TV screen blares into a life of drama, of weird faces with weirder poses, colorful scenes, and people saying and doing funny things that make him giggle.

Often, he mimics the way they exaggerate their eyebrows, how their mouths contort and wiggle like snakes coming to life. His whole family laughs when he does it, and that makes him feel cake-full good, too.

Lance watches, with wide eyes, as the handsome boys on screen deliver what his mother calls “dramatic confessions of love”. He watches, with a smile, as the pretty girls bat their eyes and fan themselves with their hands, which his mother calls “swooning for the love they accept”.

Love looks like fun. It makes you have chipmunk cheeks and do silly things.

But sometimes, the love is not so fun. Sometimes, the girls cry because they have their “hearts broken”, or the boys get mad because “their love was rejected”.

His mother hugs him closer when that happens. She’ll run a hand through his hair, wipe the tears from his eyes when he gets upset, because he doesn't understand why their love can't always just be funny and happy.

That's when she’ll shush him, and whisper into his ear, “This is why the love you need to watch, is the kind you give to other people. Because sometimes, love can be hard.”

 

* * *

 

To four-year-old Keith, love has now become a foreign concept.

Love was for when he thought that his mother's hugs meant something. Love was for when he thought that the way she soothed him when he cried, when she cradled him gently in her arms, meant that she would always be there.

She would say things a lot, about love.

“I love you to the moon and back, from the nebulas to the stars”, “The galaxy stretches only for me and you”. Poetic remnants of love, her words were the only things Keith could piece together now in his breaking memories.

Sometimes, when she would say those things, Keith would laugh as his father often snuck up behind them. Surprising and tickling him, as he snatched Keith from her and threw him a bit into the air, and Keith knew everything would be okay because his big arms would be there to catch him as he fell.

But then one day, his mother left. She left, and didn't come back.

It was a normal day, Keith remembers. She woke him up, helped him get dressed. His father had been reading the big paper with lots of lines when they got into the kitchen.

His mother promised she would be back later, patted him on the head, and made him that PB&J he loved without the crust. Left the crust separately in a pile, because he liked to eat it by itself.

She'd fluffed his long, unruly hair, making a comment about how she would cut it the next day. Then she leaned down, smelling like stars and wildflowers, and gave him a kiss on the cheek while he chewed a big bite.

She never returned. Keith waited by the window for her, most of the day and for as long into the night as he was allowed, but it was pointless.

The next day was the same. Then the next and the next, and his dad started getting mad whenever he asked when she was coming back, and that's when he stumbled upon him crying in his room and—

Keith soon learned that his mother didn't love them enough to stay.

He was only two years old.

Eventually, as Keith grew older, he began to forget his mother. He began to forget exactly what color her hair was, only that she would often braid it, and the end would tickle his nose whenever he cuddled with her. He began to forget if her skin was pale or darker, began to forget the shape of her smile and the soothing sound of her voice.

His father didn’t keep pictures of her. All he knows now, is that whenever he sees a lilac blooming, for some reason he thinks of her.

It was by this point, that his father would hardly look at him, tolling the day ignoring him whenever Keith wanted attention. He didn't want to play games anymore when Keith wanted to play. He didn't want him going outside, because it was too dangerous, or something.

He told him, in a strange voice one day, that bad people were out there. People that wanted to hurt them. That there were monsters who would come out, and they would eat him, swallow him whole the second he left the safe house.

Keith didn't try to go outside after that. It was too scary.

Then one night, almost two years after his mother left, his father tucked him into bed after reading him a book. As Keith snuggled under the covers with the old stuffed hippo his mother gave him, his father told him that he loved him, to be good, and not to leave his bedroom. Because sometimes, the monsters came into the house when it got dark.

But Keith wasn't worried. He knew his father would protect him, knew that when he opened his eyes everything would be fine.

It wasn't fine, though. When he opened his eyes to the bright sun streaming through the window the next morning, his dad was gone, too.

Keith was confused and scared when he found that no one was there when he went out to the living room, searched all through the house. His parent's shared bedroom was neat and tidy, the covers made like no one ever slept there before.

The silence was scary, but he knew how to take care of himself by then. He was a big boy. He spread the peanut butter and jelly with his fingers on some bread, because he knew knives were bad and too sharp.

The only knife Keith was allowed to touch, was the one his father told him was specially made for him. A special knife that he always had to keep with him, that would protect him when bad things happened. And that one, wasn’t good for sandwiches.

Afterwards, he wiped himself off with the dish towel, pushing his footstool to the sink so he could reach it with his sticky hands. When his clothes got too wet from all the water, he took them off and found new ones, ones that his father had washed before he left. He'd stuffed his dirty clothes into the sink, intending to wash them better later.

Life wasn’t that hard. He could probably take it from there, he had thought.

Keith waited, for a while. He didn't really know how to count the days or time, but when the sun went down, he thought about monsters breaking in and eating him alive. He thought the monsters were out there already, eating his father.

Scrambling away to his room, he hid under the bed with his special knife, crying and afraid. Finally, when his shivers became too much and the shadows too awful, he pushed his footstool to the phone, and with trembling fingers punched the important numbers his father told him only to use when there was danger.

The rest is a blur of things Keith doesn't remember much. Important people arrived, in funny suits that told him he had to leave his home. The funny suit people didn't understand about the monsters. They lied, and told him there weren't any, but Keith knew.

He could feel them in the air, could feel their eyes watching him, as the funny suit people dragged him out, kicking and screaming. When the chilly wind reached his skin, he was certain in that moment that the monsters had gotten his father. He remembers how puffy his eyes got from sobbing, how the suit people all tried to soothe him with tissues and candy and empty promises about how it would be okay.

One of them even let him go back and get his stuffed hippo, that gift from his mother so long ago. When they weren’t looking, he managed to sneak his special knife up his pant leg, like his father once taught him to do.

Not that any of that mattered, because he missed his mom, with her poetic words and tickling braid. He missed his dad, with his big arms always ready to catch him.

Keith just wanted to go home, curl up next to them, and be happy again.

But he wasn't allowed to anymore.

So it's here, now, within the cold, hard walls of the orphanage, that four-year-old Keith learns about a new kind of love. A new kind of love, that the sisters there call ‘tough’.

Apparently, little boys are supposed to grow up tough, and they say something a lot about rods and children spoiling. They tell him when they hit him for being bad, that some guy who lives in the clouds who he's never even met, still loves him, no matter what. That His Love may be vengeful, but all consuming, as long as he's a perfect child.

The big, fancy words explaining it all make no sense to Keith. He doesn't understand any of it. He just knows that it hurts not to listen to what they say.

For Keith, as he grows older, love isn't about a forgotten mother's hugs or a father’s strong arms anymore. Love is now about fear.

It’s in this way, that Keith quickly learns to keep to himself, to stay quiet and do what the sisters tell him to do. To not tattle when the older kids pick on him, because that only leads to more pain.

The most important thing for the safety of his rapidly developing mind and body, isn't love. The most important thing, is that he learns how to fight.

Which is exactly what he does.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t until Lance is twelve years old, that a male classmate of his tells him, “If you’re a boy, you can’t love other boys, you know.”

And Lance immediately laughs at that, because he thinks boys are cute. He’s always thought this, even though he thinks girls are cute, too. In fact, he has exactly three crushes in his class at this very moment, two of which are boys—Juan and Ernesto—and then Claudia, a long time object of his affection dating back from grade school.  

But just because he’s liked Claudia longer, doesn’t mean he doesn’t like Juan and Ernesto equally as much. Life is really getting harder for him these days, with so many choices of love clouding his vision. With so many new dreams about kissing them keeping him awake at night, which he doesn’t know what to make of quite yet.

Honestly, he’s been spending the most time lately staring at the back of Juan’s neck in particular, at the dark hair that brushes barely below his nape. How it curls the slightest bit in, shaggier than it was when the school year first started, which Lance thinks is pretty. For some reason, he really wants to reach out and touch it.

“Are you serious?” Lance says in response, arching a skeptical brow, “You don’t love boys?”

He thinks it’s supposed to be a joke, because he can’t understand why anyone could look at Juan and not think he’s cute.

His classmate gives him a strange look, like that’s a weird thing to say. Scrunches his nose, and tells him, “Ew, no Lance, that’s gross.” There’s a tense silence for a while, until his classmate recovers from the offense enough to ask, while leaning slightly back from him, “Do  _you_?”

Lance glances towards where Juan’s sitting. Today, he’s turned to a girl next to him, smiling with tightly closed lips. He’s recently gotten braces put on, which sucks for Lance, because now he’s too shy to smile with his teeth.

Lance thinks he’s handsome when he smiles with his teeth. He wants to tell Juan that he shouldn't feel shy when the braces are probably equally—if not more—as cute as he is.

So no, he doesn’t see the sense in denying what he likes about that.

He glances towards Claudia, too, just to make sure, and yeah—she’s wearing her hair down for once, curling ringlets framing dimpled cheeks, making her cute freckles stand out. Lance flushes when she smiles and waves to him.

There’s no way to make up his mind, though he’s never really thought much of having to make up his mind before. To him, there’s nothing wrong with liking them all, no reason to choose between them. He’d always assumed it was that way for everyone. For all his life, he’s told his mother about girls he likes or boys he likes, and never gotten a reaction of disgust like his classmate is currently giving him. His mother usually only laughs, tells him that he can love whoever he wants so long as he stops flirting in class long enough to get good grades.

Some kids nearby are beginning to whisper, having witnessed the situation. The more Lance puts off his response, the more disturbed his classmate appears.

“I—” Lance licks his lips, feeling the strange pricking of hairs at the back of his neck with all the eyes that are staring at him. He pulls at the collar of his uniform, because he needs some more air to breathe. “I mean, don’t—don’t we all?”

“No,” his classmate shakes his head, pulling a face that a few guys nearby laugh at. “Because that’s disgusting. It’s not right.”

How anyone could find any kind of love disgusting or not right, Lance thinks, is incomprehensible to him. It shatters his entire world, his entire point of view of living life like he could love anyone and it would be fine.

To Lance, love is beautiful, the only thing that keeps him going on days when he has a lot of homework and the annoying changes in his body are stressing him out. The only thing that makes him happy to think about, when his brothers and sister annoy him or his parents get into a fight.

There will always be other people there for him to love, when he doesn’t feel the love from the usual sources. There will always be other people to admire, to put himself out there for, to try and get that hint of love wherever he can find it to replenish himself.

Unfortunately, the other kids don’t share the same perspective.

The boys at school start calling him names after that, like faggot and homo. They aren’t nice things to call people, Lance soon finds out, and he definitely doesn’t feel good when even his best friend refuses to talk to him in the locker room anymore.

They avoid him like the plague there, even though Lance knows it’s not nice to watch people get undressed. He’s never invaded someone’s privacy like that before, no matter how much he might like them.

People start giving him a wide berth in the hallways and classroom, like he has some contagious disease. Some look at him more with pity, though—especially the girls, and especially Claudia. The one good thing to happen out of it is that he and Claudia start growing closer as the year goes on, though he finds out that it’s not for the same reasons he thinks it is.

Lance finds out before the school dance, after he’s spent all morning rehearsing the lines of right words to say to ask her to be his date, spent all morning sweating too much and having to keep changing his shirts until he found the right one, only to have that idea crushed into pieces when he overhears Claudia’s friend ask her if she likes him. And Claudia laughs, and says of course not, because everyone knows that Lance plays for the other team. That she hangs out with Lance because he’s nice, and she knows he won’t bother her like the other boys will.

However, that’s still not the worst thing that happens.

The worst thing that happens, is when someone whispers to Juan that they’ve noticed Lance staring at him a lot, because the clear disdain, the judgment Lance sees lying there for him the second Juan turns around and narrows his eyes, makes him feel like diving into the ocean. Makes him feel like staying underwater, and never coming back up for air again.

The next day, Juan asks to have his seat moved to the back. The next night, Lance cries in his mother’s arms, like he used to when he was just a kid who knew nothing of the hardships that life would eventually bring.

Of why love can’t always be happy and funny. Of why people are so filled with hatred inside, that they would want to snuff out someone else’s love for another person.

He cries and cries, but his mother tells him that it’ll be okay. She hands him a tissue, and says, “You’re getting bigger now. Sometimes I won’t always be there for you when you’re upset, but know, that I will always love you, no matter what. No matter who you love, I will love them, too.”

After one last hug, she pulls away, setting her hands upon his shoulders while smiling. “Besides, what people say doesn’t matter. Because the most important love out there is—”

Lance smiles back. Wipes his eyes, and gives a tired laugh as she ruffles his hair.

“—is the kind you give to other people. I know, ma, I know.”

 

* * *

  
When Keith is twelve years old, he reads a book with a curious blurb.

It’s been a favorite past time of his to visit the library nearby the orphanage, to get away from it all and indulge in the illusion of some privacy by tucking himself into a dark corner, submerging head first into any fantasy world that could take him from the harsh light of reality.

Over the years, Keith has flown with dragons, fought with elves. He’s traveled into the bowels of Hell, fearless, and conquered the entire kingdom. He’s cried at the deaths of people he could not save, even as he wore the mask and cape swearing he would always protect them, and he’s laughed as a villain relishing in those same deaths, basking in the pain and hurt he channeled into them.

He’s used magic as much as he’s used brute force of impossible strength, but he's also learned the terrible consequences some of those powers can have, that sometimes true strength is the kind that can only come from within.

There’s been travels to other planets, other galaxies, worlds with names and syllables longer than his mouth could make sense of to pronounce. Descriptions of fantastical settings, deserts he could feel the dry heat of and mountains of ice that raised goosebumps on his skin. Words that snaked together into the scent of sweet, sugary cakes he’s never had, fresh from the oven and cooling into a vat of rich vanillas and chocolates baked within artificial mixes.

There’s been deep, meaningful friendships formed that he could never in real life hope to have the social grace to ever attempt. He's felt the comfort of a hand helping him up after he fell, the surprise behind someone defending him from a bully.

He’s experienced being an only child, spoiled by loving, but perhaps misguided, parents. He’s been the middle child, often casted to the side, but shown discipline and given the mercy of his older siblings taking the fall for his mistakes first.

At this point, Keith could say he knows and has experienced all life has to offer to him, without actually having done it himself.

There’s just one thing he’s never quite gotten the feel for, though.

Hugs, no matter how many times he’s read about them, he can never properly replicate the warmth of. Hugging himself, he thinks, probably doesn’t carry the same effect. It’s underwhelming at best.

A mother’s kiss, he can’t envision upon his cheek, no matter how much like a pillow an author compares them to. When he was younger, he tried before, to place his lips on one himself.

He didn’t see what the fuss was all about. A pillow was a pillow—a softness that helped you sleep. Lips didn’t seem sensible to provide the same comfort. They were either wet and gross, or too-dry, cracked and bleeding.

When it comes to these things characters call ‘intimacy’, or a closeness you can only feel through physical experience with another person, he wants to know more, to study all he can find. He’s been gradually building up the courage to explore, though the thought makes his cheeks feel hot and his stomach strangely weird, like it does when all they have to drink for lunch is expired milk again.

There are things that he knows are out there, other shows of affection, that he’s heard the older boys talking about in the crudest ways since he was old enough to make sense of that kind of language.

It’s this curiosity that has his legs gravitating towards a new section today, one that’s not something he’s thought much of before. One that is a completely foreign concept to him, more confusing than hugs and parents with silly rules and the need to put their pillowy lips on their children’s cheeks, just so they can scrub their spit off and groan, “ _Mom, you’re embarrassing me_.”

Stopping in front of the section in question, Keith whips his head from side to side, afraid someone might be watching. Afraid the librarian, who’s been nothing but kind to him, might come up and tell him he’s not allowed to see these things yet.

When no one rushes over to put handcuffs on him, his eyes trail over the large, black words.

_Romances, harlequins,_ aka coveted materials to a young person headed towards puberty. He plucks one book at random before he scurries off, heart pounding in his chest, a flash of fear but also the small thrill of secretly exploring something like this without anyone knowing.

Settling back into his special corner, he turns the book over in his hands, because he always reads the blurbs first. Despite where he found it, it doesn’t appear that he’s picked the right genre.

He’s instantly confused, because the first sentence warns, in golden, cursive print, " _There is no love in this._ ”

Keith finds that odd, because the book is properly labeled ‘romance’, and library labels don’t lie. When he pokes his nose into a random page, there’s a cheesy paragraph about a man and woman kissing each other. On another page, there’s a picture of a muscular, shiny, shirtless man, thick curls of coarse hair littered over his chest. He’s with a woman dressed in a thin nightgown, breasts and nipples ridiculously exaggerated. The man is holding her by the throat, as she longingly gazes at him with big, fake doe eyes.

This is it, Keith thinks. This has to be the right place.

But there’s something about it that doesn’t seem right, and he can’t get those stupid words out of his head, even as he flips to the first page and starts reading anyway.

All he thinks for a long time is,  _there is no love in this, there is no love in this_ , as he mutely takes in some very flowery and boring descriptions of the woman’s breasts, what she’s wearing (basically nothing, but it’s worth mentioning again that her nipples are the pinkest pink you ever did see), and many more dull adjectives about her anticipation and wanting of Mr. Muscular Shiny Guy, the object of her affection that has yet to actually show up.

Well, this experiment was a bust. If this is what the older boy’s are always going on about, he thinks he must have a pretty bleak future. He’s about to toss the book in his bag to check out at the desk, considering it might be good for helping him sleep at night rather than for escapist reading material, when Mr. Muscular Shiny Guy finally makes his entrance.

Suddenly, he understands the woman’s wanting. As he takes in the next lines, he feels her anticipation. Feels the flex of rippling abs across  _his_ skin and the powerful grip of a hand as it wraps around _his_ neck, and he isn’t—

He isn’t interjecting himself into the role of the  _man_ , like most character’s point of views he tends to relate to, but instead, into the place of the  _woman_.

Hands slipping on the pages with sweat, Keith snaps the book shut. Stuffs it under his chair, then quietly creeps off towards the back exit.

Maybe he’s not ready after all.

 

* * *

 

The first time Keith and Lance meet, they're seventeen and sixteen years old, respectively.

If asked about it, Lance will claim it was the single worst thing to ever happen to him. Keith will claim that it was uneventful, that Lance wasn't the type to really catch his eye, but more his ear with how ineffably loud he was.

No matter what they say, they're both lying. Because that day, as they lock eyes across the simulation bay, there's something there. Something intense and unspoken, as Lance shoots a cocky smirk in his general direction and Keith licks his too-dry lips.

They never talk about it. It simply hangs there between them, whenever Lance throws an insult his way, or whenever Lance catches Keith’s gaze as he steps from the gracefully aced simulation, and shakes the dark hair away from his face.

Lance knows what he likes, and the second he meets Keith, he wants him. He likes to think about Keith when he sneaks off to the showers, wrapping a hand around himself to work off that built up pressure. He likes to imagine a Keith not ignoring his presence, but paying attention to it intently by laying him down onto a bed, undressing him nice and slow with sultry music playing in the background.

That’s what all the people in the TV shows do when they’re in love. They’re passionate, intense, their dedication to each other blooming in the form of littering rose petals onto silken covers and popping open strawberry champagne before they kiss in a jacuzzi smelling of rich perfumes.

Lance wants the intensity of Keith, wants to teach him what he knows about love, and it hurts to think about. Whenever they make those few heated moments of eye contact during class, Lance is painfully reminded of Juan. Of his reactions so long ago, a reaction of rejection he’s grown used to over the years. He thinks Keith won’t ever look at him that way, so he hides those feelings down deep, and works it out through vitriol and angry words he doesn’t mean.

When Lance fucks a few girls that year, they always have long, dark hair and eyes. As he’s sinking into them, he’s always thinking of that messy, cropped mullet, leather gloves roaming against his skin instead of manicured nails.

And he—he wants to sleep with a guy for the first time so badly it hurts, but he can’t bring himself to do it when that feels like even more of a betrayal to Keith. He wants to save that moment for Keith, and only Keith somehow, no matter how crazy the thought is.

Keith, on the other hand, has thirteen years of experience under his belt at suppressing his feelings. For this reason, the feelings come on slower for him, gradually increasing as time goes on, as he gets to know more about Lance. His attempts at friendship with Lance are met with taunts, with jealousy for his skills in piloting. So Keith gives up, because it isn’t as if he hasn’t experienced rejection before.

He doesn’t think there’s any interest in there at all—Lance seems to all but hate his guts, and there’s no point pursuing something where he’s not wanted. The attraction is easier to accept for him from afar, anyway. Lance is pretty, sure, when he’s not being a total jackass to Keith. He’s popular and charming, good with his words in a way Keith never has been. Good with turning them soft and sweet, as easily as he can snarl and bite with them.

When it comes to fucking, though, Keith doesn’t have much of a type. He fucks to escape, much in the same way he gets caught between the pages of a book. He doesn’t care who it is or how it happens, it’s just an occasional itch he has to scratch. Nothing more, nothing less than that.

“There’s no love for you here, fruit cakes,” Iverson barks to them one day, the usual insults that are typical from instructors, always especially harsh coming from him. “Your mommies aren’t around to hold your hands anymore, so tighten up, cadets!”

And Keith salutes, straightening his back, and says, “Yes, sir,” because obedience is a familiarity that’s been repeatedly beaten into him.

And Lance scoffs, gets reprimanded for it, but he still salutes and grits out the words he knows he’s supposed to say, because that’s what his mother taught him was polite.

They play the games they need to. They move up in ranks and continue on like neither of their presences matter to the other, when Lance can’t stop watching Keith’s every tiny mannerism during class, and Keith can’t stop envisioning what might happen if he tried shutting Lance up with his lips.

But when one day Keith is suddenly gone, Lance seems to be the only one to notice.

  

* * *

 

“This isn’t about love,” Lance, now nineteen years old and defender of the universe, clarifies.

Because it isn’t, it can’t be. Love is mysterious and whimsical, the sweetness of warm, tender lips and the treasure of a gentle touch, neither of which are things he assumes Keith would offer him.

Keith laughs at that, a hollow, empty sound. Lance pretends as if he likes it, pretends as if it means something more than whatever raw deal they’re about to make here.

He’s just lonely, Lance reminds himself. Keith’s just lonely. They’re just two lonely guys, agreeing to cut the tension that always clings to them. A raging spark of tension that jumps higher every time they fan the flames between them.

Sometimes it will appear in the form of Lance catching Keith’s dark gaze as it flits over his exposed body when he’s pulling on his skin tight suit, or sometimes it will happen in the heady confusion of battle, when Keith’s gasps for breath intermingle with his own as they press back-to-back, and protect each other from death.

Whatever it is, it needs to end now. Lance needs this. He needs Keith more than Keith will ever know the inner reasoning for why.

“Wasn’t asking for it to be,” Keith replies. Gruff. Eyes cast down in the dark, like it even matters where he looks.

He’s taking this much better than Lance thought he would. He thought that his suggestion might be met with disgust, outrage, or pity, even.

Instead, here Keith is on his bed, obediently unclasping his armor, peeling off his sweaty undersuit like he’s been ready for this for ages and—

Lance gulps, and he stuffs down those old feelings way, way deep. Never one to exert patience, he pushes Keith onto his back, without another word. He watches hungrily as he bounces against the mattress, before quickly straddling over him, with his hands clamping Keith's wrists to his sides.

For the first time, he seals his lips to the sweetly flushing skin of Keith’s neck, and then sinks his teeth in. Hard, because love is soft, and this isn’t about love.

The rest of his reservations are drowned out by the sound of Keith’s following moan, something so uninhibited and dangerous he feels like he might fall anyway.

“I want to fuck you,” Lance announces, brow beading with sweat, because when he looks down at the blown pupils of Keith’s eyes, at the halo of dark hair fanning out onto his pillow, he knows that’s just what he needs to make this all go away.

Keith wriggles impatiently under him, struggling to push the rest of his suit off his legs. “So then fuck me,” he growls. “Or at least let me get undressed first, fuck.”

Lance lets him get undressed, but not before he grinds for a while against him, not until he has Keith right where he wants him—a quaking, pliant mess pleading him for more. Disheveled in all the right ways, with his hair caught between spit slicked lips, swollen and twitching cock curved against his stomach. There's a deep avoidance between them for making direct eye contact, which Lance thinks is fine, because they're probably both better off that way.

Fucking Keith is different than fucking those girls. It’s different and better all in one, because he always thought of Keith then, but now he has the real thing. Which is nerve wracking, exciting, because he’s finally getting the chance to prove himself to him.

And as usual, it’s going to take some work.

Keith makes soft noises at first, tiny and guarded, quieter than Lance expects. He isn't afraid to tell Lance what he wants, though, how he likes it, and when he's doing something wrong. Louder and bolder, because Keith must always be typically blunt, no matter the situation.

The real problem is that he isn't afraid to smile, either. To gasp, with his mouth dropped open in silent exclamation, as Lance probes that first finger into him. Adding another, and another, just so he can see that smile widen.

Oh, it's beautiful. Keith is beautiful, like the shadows of night that hide away, but are always welcoming when you seek refuge in them.

He’s waited for this moment for far too long.

“Hurry up,” Keith demands, ruining the soft illusion of intimacy. Of romance that doesn’t actually exist.

It jolts Lance back to a contrasting reality, a sort of twilight here, as he’s slicking himself and lining up to Keith. He stares for a while at where their bodies are about to be joined. At Keith’s dripping, stretched hole, wondering how he even managed to hold out after all this time.

Then Keith’s eyes take on a silent desperation when Lance’s vision tilts back to him, his chest heaving shallowly as he stares questioningly back, and Lance can’t deny what he wants to do here any longer. He’d thought about turning Keith over to make this easier emotionally, but he knows now, that this is the best position.

The position where he can see every bit of Keith as he unravels. The position where he can poke and prod more than he usually does, and Lance sinks in past that tight rim without another thought, hands automatically finding their way to Keith’s neck. An instinctual need for something more to hold onto, for that release.

Keith doesn’t stop him. His hips enthusiastically jerk into the feeling, breath hitching sharply as Lance squeezes his throat harder the deeper he slips in, until his mouth is frozen in an exclamatory ‘ _oh_ ’ with not enough breath left for proper sound to escape. Keith scrambles to wrap shaking arms around Lance’s shoulders, clinging to him with his fingernails digging in tight.

It isn’t until Keith lets out a choked whimper that Lance comes back to himself, vision shifting heavily as Keith coughs with the renewal of sudden oxygen.

“I, shit, sorry.” Lance draws back his hands, wide eyed, stalling inside him. Staring at his palms, appalled, at how easily he crossed that line. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to hurt you. I don’t know what came over me.”

He’s really messed up, ruined in some way inside, for sure. There’s always something about Keith that takes him there, to a place where even he doesn't know how he'll react. That always gets his blood pumping just that much harder, until it threatens to rush out of him.

But Keith says, “No,” with a scowl, and yanks his arm down, pressing his fingers back around his throat, “I—I want you to.”

The shock washes over Lance slowly, in wave after wave of confusion. Keith must have felt that strange intensity, too, that insidious pull between them, causing them both to snap. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Lance presses in again, against his windpipe. Cautiously, finger-by-finger, until Keith loses his patience and goads, “Take my breath away already, cargo pilot.”

The force he exerts after that, is strong enough to see the strain of every muscle, every tendon in Keith’s neck. Strong enough to get him gasping, tightening around him, clutching his back more desperately than Lance could have ever imagined.

Lance only lets up when the redness on his cheeks begins to turn faintly blue at the edges, and Keith gives the signal by tapping out at his leg. A familiar signal that they once used for training, now rewritten and holding a different weight every time they tackle each other to the ground from here on out.

Lance thrusts forward, harder than ever, as Keith fights to catch his breath. Struggling, panting, as enough oxygen burns back in his lungs for him to let out a high pitched cry.

And that’s—that’s  _exactly_ the reaction Lance has always been searching for from him.

His thrusts become quicker, deeper, more powerful than even he knew he was capable of. Sweat drips from his brow, onto Keith’s heaving chest. No longer driven by thought, but pure adrenaline and feeling, Lance rips Keith's arms from his back, jerking them up and over his head, pinioning his wrists between clammy fingers.

Keith arches like the crack of a whip into him. “Kiss me,” he urges, with wild eyes and a dangerously low, raspy whisper, tipping his head. Exposing his throat, in a show of unwavering trust.

Lance leans down with the intention of it, fumbling and so damn awkward inside him—but he must be doing something right, because Keith is moaning loudly now and snapping his hips up and up. Lance can feel his toes curling against his back, sees how his fingers are stretching to grasp onto the pillow behind him.

He's never wanted to kiss someone as badly as he does in this moment, but his lips stop before they make it. They hover over Keith’s, barely an inch away, like a magnet is repelling them apart.

Because kissing is something you do with someone you love. And even though he really loves Keith like that, Keith doesn’t love him, has never loved him, so it doesn’t seem right.

Lance doesn’t like empty gestures of love. It makes him think, weirdly enough, about upset people on dramatic daytime TV.

He thinks he can make up some bullshit excuse later for why he hesitated, but Keith is squeezing tight around him and he can’t hold out anymore. Lance comes with a jolt and a gasp of Keith’s name, feeling the hot walls around him contract once more before thick ropes of cum coat both of their stomachs.

There’s only a moment where they still to catch their breath. Lance feels slow and sleepy, almost forgetting to move until Keith is shoving him away, groaning about getting his sweaty body off him. He says in a clipped, still breathless voice, that he has to get going. That they both do.

They have things to achieve and people to save. Missions to go on, and hours to train. The team will be looking for them soon enough since they planned this out poorly on a whim and got carried away, already farther than they probably should have.

The contract was sex, and that was it. No cuddling, no kissing, no soft, sweet nothings. That’s what Lance proposed. That’s what he has to stick to.

“Alright,” Lance mutters, shakily reaching for his suit. “Just—leave before me, so no one knows.”

Keith nods, resolute, forcing an air of indifference that Lance wishes he was half as capable of. Armor on, walls up—that’s Keith. He can sense some hesitation in him for a moment or two as he reaches the door, but Keith still doesn’t turn around, or say another word.

Then he’s gone, and Lance can breathe again. Can curl up for a moment and try to ease the ache inside him.

In the back of his mind, he can’t help but think—

The only love you need to watch, is the kind you give to other people.

  

* * *

 

_There is no love in this._

_There is no love in this_ , twenty-year-old Keith repeats to himself, slamming his hips at a merciless rate. The body beneath him trembles, pink lips parting around a moan that slips off a tongue he knows won’t ever tell him what he longs to hear.

That cocky mouth tells him plenty of other things, though. He tells him to go faster, to go harder. He tells him that he can take it, that he wants to be ruined. That Keith ruining him with his thick cock is all he ever thinks about anymore.

He asks him for more, begs to be touched in a certain way that he doesn’t have to, because Keith has already memorized where all those sensitive spots lie long ago.

“Is that all you got?” Lance will usually say within the thick of it, smirking, goading like he knows will push that pressure point of his. His cheeks will be softened with a rosy flush, his forehead sheened with sweat, but his smile will be wicked and handsome, just as it always is.

Keith still relishes the look of utter surprise on his face, that double spark of arousal when he lets the anger flow out and into his fingertips and hips. He’ll conjure a real life, flesh masterpiece into existence below him.

He’ll channel that miserable energy into yanking Lance’s legs up higher, driving into him until he’s absolutely howling to the dimly lit ceiling of the room. Clawing at his back, leaving welts along pale skin for Keith to admire later when he sulks into the mirror, reflecting on when everything started getting this complicated.

This time is no different.

After Lance says it, Keith digs crescents into the thin skin of his wrists, thrusting within everything in him until Lance finally gets the common sense to close his mouth for anything other than inhuman noises. To add that edge that he knows will bring Lance over, Keith leans down, sinking his teeth into the column of that pretty, flushed neck.

“Yes,” Lance breathes, air punching out of him in short gasps as he slams his eyes shut, “Yes, yes, that’s it, please, right  _there_. Fuck me harder, baby,  _fuck me_.”

Almost impossibly, Keith increases his tempo, spreading Lance's flexible legs to get a better angle. One at his shoulder, the other wrapped so that his heel is digging sharply into the small of his back. Keith’s hands move to gain leverage at his waist, gripping rough and bruising like he knows Lance will ask for anyway. Running his tongue along the bony ankle balanced at his ear, Keith pulls slowly out, inch-by-inch, until Lance cries for him to fill him back up.

Grinning, laughing, Keith thrusts quickly back in. Out and in and out. Faster, slower, it doesn’t matter, because Lance really does love it all.

All except him.

The squelch of their bodies meeting, the filthy slap of skin-on-skin, echoes hollowly around them. Keith’s eyes zone in on bitten lips, desiring to touch, to feel and see if they taste any different during the time Lance arches off the bed and his entire body quakes with pleasurable convulsions.

But Lance doesn’t like when he kisses him then. He doesn’t particularly like Keith kissing him at all, really. He tells him it’s gross and doesn’t feel right. Tells him it makes it too intimate, and ‘ _friends with benefits don’t kiss when they cum, mullet, don’t make this weird’_.

As if anything could be more weird than this. As if anything could be more weird than Lance himself suggesting they hook up to try and calm down their rivalry. As if anything could be weirder than that first time Keith agreed to blow off some steam with him against his inner voice telling him that it would only end up hurting him more, in the end.

Which it did, and keeps doing, every time he gives in whenever those deep, baby blues flash in his direction. Oh, well. He’s a weak man, so here he is, and here’s what he gets for caving to gain that one unsatisfying half of his desires being fulfilled.

Something is better than nothing, Keith thinks. Something loveless is better than not having at least this desperate, beautiful image of Lance, completely at his mercy.

The most perfect, drawn out moan falls from Lance’s mouth as Keith fists his hand around his cock, and pumps in time with his thrusts. There's a smile upon those tempting lips, an increase of scratches searing into Keith’s skin.

And still, it’s never enough.

As Keith feels that familiar sweep of heat up his spine, he wonders what Lance thinks about during this time, when he closes his eyes. He wonders if he’s thinking of someone else, lost in his own harlequin romance where he’s the budding male star. Keith wonders if he’s imagining curvy hips, long, thick hair tangled between his fingers and breasts bouncing against his chest.

He wonders if he smells sweet perfume and hears an accented voice murmuring the praises Keith can’t help but whisper into his ear, because fuck if he hasn’t at least earned the right to do that.

Maybe he doesn’t look at him, because he knows Keith will be there, and he’s afraid of the truth he’ll see lying within the honest spark of his eyes.

Keith doesn’t understand why  _his_ name is always the one slipping from Lance's mouth instead of hers, but it  _does things_ to him. Sends him spiraling hard, all the same, rushing to follow in an intense orgasm that fills Lance to the brim.

He never pulls out right away. He prefers to wait until he knows Lance will crack open his eyes blearily, and smile in that sweet afterglow of exhaustion. Stunning doesn’t even begin to describe how he looks when he does it, and Keith’s chest gets familiarly, painfully tight. Then his breath starts coming in all stabbing and weird, like it’s being forcibly ripped out of his lungs and then shoved right back in.

“Good game,” comes the unfortunate rasp across his lips. Lips that are close enough that Keith could easily claim them now if they weren’t so hellbent on saying nonsense.

Lance gives him a hearty pat on the back, ruining the mood on way too many levels simultaneously. Keith grunts, shrugging off his hand.

“Don’t call it that,” he snaps, pulling out, “this isn’t a soccer match.”

Keith quickly tugs his clothes on. Already mortified that he loves this guy, already annoyed at how easily Lance lets this all slip off him. Already done with this heartache for now, until it rolls around for the next time where they’ll find themselves horny and frustrated with a need to work out that loneliness, to work out their shortcomings naked and writhing over silken, Altean sheets.

“Didn’t say it was,” Lance snaps right back, “but the effort you put into it is nothing short of an olympian going for the gold. And I’m just saying, I appreciate that.”

Keith stares at him, furrowing his brows. Some things Lance says, he will never understand.

Not that that ever makes a difference, because Lance pays him no mind, humming a happy tune with his tongue slightly poking out as he gathers his clothes and draws his arms into his shirt.

Keith hates this part. He hates how he can’t stop from watching him afterwards, how coming hasn’t solved anything when his eyes work hard to memorize the lines of Lance’s satisfied face, how they flit to all the body language he can interpret with an ease that he’s never bothered to decipher on anyone else.

Keith thought he read enough to understand how people worked, how they felt. But now he knows, there will always be that all too real divide between his inability to express himself and forming a genuine connection.

Lance, in contrast, is always completely relaxed, completely unaware of Keith’s gaze on him. Completely unabashed as he reaches for the damp washcloth they leave on the dresser, flips to his hands and knees, and reaches back to spread himself to try and clean away the mess.

Maybe he’d gotten a little too carried away this time, because Lance winces and shudders when he breaches over the swollen rim with one finger. A rivulet of cum trickles down his thigh, and a pitiful whine stops Keith in his tracks.

He swallows, hard. He doesn’t usually offer this, but—Keith thinks it’s the least he can do.

“Here,” he says, coming up behind Lance and settling his hand on the cloth, “let me help.”

Lance doesn’t protest, just leans forward on his elbows and cracks some dumb joke about Keith never being able to get enough of him. Keith doesn’t comment, because he’s right, and he hates that, too.

Upon closer inspection, the abused skin there is reddened and somewhat puffy, hot to the touch. Gently, Keith drags the washcloth over his twitching hole, dipping it in as carefully as he can to drag out and catch the spilling cum. He doesn’t miss the whistle of a hiss escaping through Lance’s obviously clenched teeth.

“Does it hurt?” Keith asks, unable to keep the concern and softness from eeking out into his words. Unable to keep his other hand from caressing soothingly over the swell of one cheek, and planting the tiniest press of a kiss to the small of his back.

Lance pauses before he answers. It’s hard to tell how he’s receiving this tenderness, and Keith wishes he could see his face, but at the same time, it’s probably for the best he doesn’t. He figures there will only be disgust lying there for getting all mushy on him for something as ridiculous as taking care of his ass.

Finally, Lance admits in a quiet voice unlike him, “...a little. Yeah.”

“Sorry,” Keith says, and he means it. Means it even more as he kisses slowly up over the notches of Lance’s spine, tasting the sweetness of cooling sweat on his skin. Counting the notches as he goes, making sure Lance knows how much he cherishes each part of him.

Suddenly, Keith’s lips meet air.

“No worries, no worries,” Lance is laughing, popping back over and slinking into a sultry pose on his side. Whatever was escaping in that small show of vulnerability, goes back to being hidden. He looks up at him through a curtain of thick lashes. “You know I like it. I like feeling that you’ve been there when I’m walking around. Makes me feel  _dirty_.”

He accentuates the word with a low purr and a lewd slip of his tongue between two fingers spread on either side of it, eyebrows jumping up and down in suggestion. Keith feels his spent cock giving another tired twitch.

Keith sighs, running a frazzled hand through his hair. He doesn’t have time for this teasing today. This was already their second round, and Lance’s insatiable appetite for his dick isn’t making any of this easier.

Tossing the washcloth so that it lands with a wet  _smack_ against Lance’s bewildered face, Keith gets to his feet with a huff. “Finish the rest yourself. I’ve got to hit the training deck.”

Hit the training deck, to resist hitting himself for continuing to let this go on for as long as it has. Keith ignores the dramatic screeching of Lance telling him how disgusting that was and flailing around like an idiot. In fact, it’s the perfect backdrop of music to his ears as he passes the sensor and the door slides open for him.

The words he really wants to say never leave his lips. The parting kiss he always wants to give he never gets the chance to try.

With another scoff, Keith steps out into the hall. His single footsteps echo in exactly the same way that their fucking does.

Friends with benefits probably don’t call each other ‘ _baby’_ , either, but at least Keith has the common decency not to make a big deal out of that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> yeah, there’s no happy ending to this. the prompt for today was 'ruin', and ruin each other they have. happy [klangst week](https://klangst-week.tumblr.com/), you sorry bitches ❤


End file.
